Doorway
by sylph-feather
Summary: Something tugs at Danny, insistently. "Follow," it croons, and he cannot deny it.


Sam and Tucker _told _Danny what he… _looked like_ after the… he's classifying it as a "near death experience" because he doesn't want to think about just how close "near" really is.

Really, he just doesn't want to think about it; Danny has one foot in denial and one foot in disbelief.

On this night, the latter is running through his head— empty comforts of how it was a trick of the light, how his friends were shocked, and on and on.

These meaningless thoughts are interrupted by… it's indescribable. It's in his mind, _almost_ a thought… but Danny is half aware that it's not really _his _thought. It's not really an intelligible thing, either; merely a faint croon, an urge.

Eyes tinged with luminescent green, half awake, he stumbles out of bed.

Danny catches himself in his doorway, shakes himself off with a hand planted on the frame. _I must be more tired and stressed than I thought. _

He throws himself back into his bed, urging himself to sleep. Toxic green leaks out of his eyes.

xXx

It doesn't happen again _that night_ but the strange siren song happens over and over. Danny follows it in the twilight time when he is between waking and sleeping; so many _betweens— _and he consistently snaps out of it somewhere between his destination and his bed, too.

First, Danny brushes it off as sleep walking— especially after researching. Things like electrocution can lead to messed up brain patterns that skew with things like that, leading to this. (Danny also enforces to himself that electrocution _does not _lead to glowing green eyes and white hair, as he researched that as well. A small brick to add to his fort of denial).

It goes on like this. Each night, Danny gets further and further; the first handful of days, he comes to and stops himself in his room, and drags himself back to bed unconcerned. Then he's planting his hand on sections of hallway wall to lean out of the odd state. Danny doesn't really _worry _about the pull until he finds himself on the eighth night staring into the bathroom mirror as green bleeds out of his eyes. The boy only stares dumbstruck as the glow fades, then slowly slides down the wall in the blind darkness.

He breathes heavily, lost in too many thoughts that whirl too fast for true comprehension. Half of him wants someone to find him there, comfort him.

Nobody comes. Danny drags himself back to bed.

He doesn't sleep, too caught up in the fear of where he was being pulled towards.

xXx

"Are you okay?" Tucker asks, taking in his dark bags and distant, thoughtful stare.

Danny turns that dead, vacant gaze to him, and Tucker looks guilty— just as guilty looking as Sam is, hunched up in her desk.

Tucker fiddles with his nails and looks away, treating him as though he is fragile; both of them have been doing that and a good guilty impression since _the accident_.

Considering Danny has not slept for days in order to get _it _out of his mind, he can't bring himself to care.

xXx

The whole _not sleeping _plan is not one of Danny's best by a long shot. Really, he is energetic longer than a human _should _be, but he can't even rejoice in that considering the implications.

But after nearly two weeks of no sleep _at all_ his head hits the school cafeteria table.

Immediately, there's that same insistent trill in his head. Danny rights himself, staring out at Sam and Tucker with bright green eyes.

Tucker and Sam watch dumbfounded as Danny takes a robotic step _through_ his lunch seat, and begins floatily walk away. His presence is dreamlike.

Danny awakes to a warm hand on his shoulder, him staring at Sam as the green drips away.

And Danny just _breaks. _

"It's calling me," he says, stuffing air into his lungs at a rapid pace and keeling down on the moist grass, curling up. "Every time I sleep I need to _go." _

"Where?" Sam asks, confused.

"Dunno. Don't wanna find out," Danny admits wheezily.

Tucker and Sam's warm bodies ground his cold one.

xXx

That same night, he drops asleep _again. _This time, nobody is there to wake him.

Half awake, he drifts out the doorway, floatily stepping through the hallway.

Everything is hazy, but he cannot bring himself to question his actions enough to bring himself out.

The metal door of the basement stands before him. A cool, glowing halo pierces the night.

xXx

Glowing green eyes that look like reflections of the portal behind them cast one last half-aware look over the metallic lab before turning back to the portal.

His mind is both silent and screaming. Something in Danny feels like vomiting, yet he cannot fathom why; his whole being is so blissfully at peace. Something in him says that he will get more of this within the toxic green pool— the rest is screaming.

Cold yet warm, he moves of a will not entirely his own, and goes through the portal.


End file.
